The moment it happens
Answer texted questions from your Airtable info
People text a question to your number and get a short answer drawn from the details you keep in Airtable.
- Runs
- The moment it happens
- Apps
- Airtable, Twilio
- AI
- Yes, uses the built-in AI allowance
- Access
- Airtable read; Twilio number config
Send this to your assistant
Create a ClickRuntime automation: when someone texts my Twilio number, look up the answer in my Airtable 'Courses' table with AI and text it back.
First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.
Why use it
Why teams use this automation
A local training centre runs evening courses and gets the same questions by text every week: when does the next first-aid course start, how much is it, is there parking. Staff answer from the course list in Airtable, often hours later, and some people book elsewhere in the meantime.
Letting AI read the course table and reply within seconds answers the routine questions straight away. Staff keep the table up to date, and the answers follow.
What you get out of it
Answers in seconds, day or night
People get a reply while they are still deciding, not the next morning.
Always from your own data
AI answers only from the records in your Courses table, so dates and prices match what you publish.
Update the table, update the answers
Change a start date in Airtable and the next reply uses it.
Hard questions go to a person
If the answer is not in the table, the reply says so and gives your phone number.
How it works
What happens, step by step
Someone texts your Twilio number, and Twilio passes the text to ClickRuntime.
It reads the current list of courses from your Airtable table.
AI writes a short answer using only those course details.
The answer is texted back to the person from your number.
Before it runs live
- Connect Airtable
- Connect Twilio
- Paste your automation's link into the other app's webhook settings
What you get
Build your own
Need it to work differently?
Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.
Changes you can ask for
- Act only on the items that match your own rules, and skip the rest
- Change what the AI looks for, or how it writes the result
- Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
- Combine it with other Airtable and Twilio steps into one automation
Under the hood
The code that runs this automation
from clickruntime import on_event, credentials, http, ai
BASE_ID, FROM, PHONE = "appXXXXXXXXXXXXXX", "+447700900000", "01632 960 123"
def sms(to, body):
sid = credentials.secret("TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID")
return http.post(f"https://api.twilio.com/2010-04-01/Accounts/{sid}/Messages.json",
auth=(sid, credentials.secret("TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN")), data={"From": FROM, "To": to, "Body": body})
@on_event
def handle(event):
msg = event.json or {}
sender, question = msg.get("From"), (msg.get("Body") or "").strip()
if not sender or not question:
return {"ignored": True}
courses = http.get(f"https://api.airtable.com/v0/{BASE_ID}/Courses",
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.connection('airtable', 'work')}"},
params={"pageSize": 100}).json()["records"]
info = "\n".join("; ".join(f"{k}: {v}" for k, v in r["fields"].items()) for r in courses)[:20000]
answer = ai.generate(f"Courses:\n{info}\n\nQuestion: {question[:500]}", max_output_tokens=150,
system=f"Answer in under 300 characters using only the course data. If unsure, say so and give {PHONE}.").text
sms(sender, answer[:320]).raise_for_status()
return {"answered": True}FAQ
Common questions
Can AI make up an answer?
How long are the replies?
Does it remember earlier messages from the same person?
What permissions does it need?
Does it need AI?
How many runs does it use?
Can I change how it works?
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